#MFRWauthor Giving and Taking Advice: Helpful or Not?

Week #7 #MFRWauthor

Giving and Taking Advice: How it can help?

Oh, hi, I’m back for this week’s challenge. I seem to have lost my blogging mojo. After missing a few weeks, I thought I better find a way to jump back into the 52-Week Blog Challenge this week. It’s only February, so I’ve already blown it if I thought I could make the whole year. Sheesh, I’m even late with this post.

How can giving and taking advice be helpful? You know, we can give and take advice about lots of things, but I’m assuming this topic is about writing.

Taking Advice:

To me, taking advice must be weighed and measured against what we already know. Let’s face it. There is good and bad advice out there.

Here are a couple of writing related examples of how taking advice helps us:

I haven’t used a blog tour company before; however, if I did, it’s been too long ago to remember, so let’s say you want to do a blog tour. Getting advice from others who have used a tour service can help lead to your decision. This is helpful because your advice comes from others who have been there. Their advice might also suggest new blog tour companies you never heard of, or sway you away from one you don’t want to use. It’s the same with doing other book promotions. We can seek advice before handing over our hard-earned money. This is helpful.

A year ago, when I did the major revision on a series starter, I wasn’t sure which way to turn or if I should unpublish and revise the book. After discussing this with friends and hearing what they thought, I went to an author who had talked about this in a workshop. I needed to know if this was right for me. Her sound advice helped me in my decision.

Not every piece of advice works for each person.

Have you ever had too much advice leave you more confused? I have. What do you do when there is too much advice? In this case, too much isn’t helpful at all. I try to weigh the options and consider the sources of the advice.

Giving Advice:

That said, I’m careful about giving advice because I don’t want to offend someone who knows more than I could advise. Surely, I don’t want to come off as trying to sound like a know-it-all when I don’t. I fear I might’ve recently stepped over the line not too long ago.

To sum it up, giving and taking advice can be both helpful and not helpful at the same time. This is all in my opinion, of course.

This is a blog hop. Find the other bloggers in the challenge HERE. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for this mindful post, Mary.
“…taking advice must be weighed and measured against what we already know.” That’s a very good point. Particularly since advice from various people ends up being contradictory.
That happened with advanced readers for “Bloom”. It was the first time I had gotten people to read in advance. I only used a handful. Two of them had polar opposite opinions. I took the one as validation, and the other — I still tried to learn what I could from it, without ruining what someone else liked.
Whether with writing or general live stuff, I’ve found that so many people want to “participate” (I won’t even use the word “help” because they just want to participate) by recommending something/someone — even when that worked out badly for them. Yes, taking advice is tricky business.
Oh, and I value your advice and feedback. 🙂 ❤ Happy weekend hugs.

A lot of my advice and feedback comes from experience, and when it does, I feel comfortable giving it. If I’m not comfortable with the situation, then I won’t say anything. Happy weekend to you, as well.

Really interesting, Mary. I always welcome advice. It’s usually well-intentioned, so even if it isn’t helpful, I appreciate it. Giving advice is trickier as sometimes it’s not well received. I only give advice if it’s asked for and even then I feel it out. So much of writing isn’t one-size-fits-all and I’m no expert – that’s for sure – so even when I do dish it out, I suggest that it should be taken with a grain of salt. 🙂

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